


What Has Happened to You?

by mols



Series: Building A Silent Hill Universe of My Own [3]
Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In Water Ending, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Post-Canon, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 14:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19320118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mols/pseuds/mols
Summary: James and Henry meet after Silent Hill.





	What Has Happened to You?

**Author's Note:**

> It's the In Water Ending, but James doesn't go along with it entirely.

When Henry got to know James, the guy was all about unhealthy coping mechanisms.

He used illicit substances, got routinely trashed and had a boyfriend from Hell - and it didn’t even start giving away how damned it was.

He’d call Henry “vanilla” in an awkward way as if also asking for forgiveness. A nervous and sad smile on his lips.

He used to show up at Ashville Heights at late hours with purple bruises all over his body.

Sometimes Henry would hear Frank - the Super, also James’ father - from downstairs, arguing with his son while James walked up the stairs in melancholic silence.

James was living in the same hall as Henry. He figured the guy couldn’t keep living with his dad, not while they disagreed so much over James’ current lifestyle - even when James seemed rather unsustained by himself after his wife’s death.

Already then, Henry wanted to help out his neighbor; not just because James looked good - which Henry could just pretend for so long that James’ actually sad beauty didn't warmly squeeze his heart, making him a little selfishly generous, but only slightly - but because James seemed to be kind whenever he could to whoever he met. Henry knew because he had learned, away from his parents’ home, to always pay attention to the details that went beyond the first impression. He had learned that things were mostly a lot more complex than people gave the credit for - James seemed to just genuinely take everything people threw his way, without a word, even smiling.

It was odd for Henry because he had heard rumors about James coming back that kind of damaged from Silent Hill while Henry felt somewhat stronger after the experience. As if Henry was wakened up by Walter and how finite was life for the number of times he almost lost his.

James, like Walter, seemed to have come out split, but different from Walter, James had the strength of thousand parts scattered through him, instead of a strangely simple two parts split.

One day, when Henry was coming back from a freelance job, he found James bent over his door, trying to fit his key in his door keyhole. Henry studied him discreetly as he opened his own door with two turns of his key and had the thought of letting James alone. He knew the guy was the kind of person who always wanted to be let alone by the neighbors, but Henry figured it was not a polite word he wanted to give James, Henry genuinely wanted to help the man out.

“Can I help?” Henry slowly approached the slightly older man.

James startled, almost jumping. His shoulders jerking a little.

“It’s...it’s not necessary,” James said, smiling politely.

James seemed to have been drinking but had sobered up enough after the door not budging.

His voice was sweet and low, like his face, his personality: pretty but lowkey, introvert, locked in another world.

Henry didn’t reply and watch as James kept fidgeting with the key, trying to find the hole, then the key not turning inside it.

He swore, straightening his back up. He banged a fist at the door with irritation but mild strength. He looked tired, too tired.

His head slightly bouncing against the door top since he had his forehead leaned on the wood.

“Let me help you,” Henry told him again, coming closer, resting a hand on the doorframe while looking sideways at James, “it won’t be too much.”

James slowly threw a hesitant glance at Henry, fidgeting with the key chain between his fingers but in the end, he nodded, looking and walking away.

Henry felt a pinching in his chest at James’ reaction, his depression and grief showing all over his body language.

Quietly, Henry came forward and straightened another key from the chain into James’ door and got it opened.

James snorted behind him, looking bitter at his place, shaking his head.

Henry wished he could know how to help James out. He slowly walked away and looked up at James.

James sighed, his back against the wall across his door, resting his body as he closed his eyes. The man was definitely tired and probably chewed up by the last nights he had lived through. Nobody in the building talked about it with Henry, but Henry knew everybody was aware of James’ destructive behavior since his wife’s death.

A great pause like a wall was built in front of Henry, or so he felt as James didn’t move, didn’t talk.

When Henry though better turning back and moving away.

He heard James groaning, softly:

“Thank you,” he had let out in a hoarse tone, looking between eye-lidded eyes at Henry with a small twist of lips as if James was trying his damn best for Henry.

Henry then shook his head, waving his hand.

“It’s alright, it was no problem.”

James didn’t seem to agree, his eyes seemed lost in some cavity of the ground when suddenly he spoke.

“You should come in sometime.”

Henry frowned, turned back to James but turning his face around for a moment he nodded, politely. He didn’t want to be part of James’ destruction and Henry so felt that it was the invitation that James was proposing him.


End file.
